A Google Inc. executive said that the company is still considering its next step in China -- seven weeks after it pledged to stop censoring search results there and threatened to pull out of the country altogether. Google Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Nicole Wong told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the company is continuing to investigate a hacking attack that emanated from China and attempts to snoop on dissidents' e-mail.
The European Commission said it plans to revise a law governing the provision of basic telephone and Internet services to Europe's most remote regions, bringing it up to date with modern technological demands. The current telecoms universal services law from 2002 ensures all European Union citizens have access to fixed-line telephone and basic Internet, regardless of their location.
A top Senate Democrat criticized the technology industry for its unwillingness to stand up to foreign governments that restrict access to online content, pledging to introduce legislation that would impose penalties on Internet companies that facilitate human rights violations in repressive regimes. "The bottom line is this: with a few notable exceptions, the technology industry seems unwilling to regulate itself and unwilling to even engage in a dialogue with Congress about the serious human rights challenges the industry faces," Dick Durbin, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law and assistant Senate majority leader, said at a hearing on Internet freedom.
Apple said that it had filed lawsuits against HTC, the Taiwan-based phone maker, accusing it of infringing on 20 Apple patents tied to the iPhone. The suits, filed with the office of the United States International Trade Commission and the United States District Court in Delaware, say HTC violated patents covering the phone’s user interface, internal architecture and hardware.
A proposed class-action settlement by Facebook Inc. has come under fire for a strange reason: It is perceived by some to be overly charitable. As such, the deal has rekindled criticisms about an increasingly popular way to reach settlements in large cases.
Spam now accounts for close to 90 percent of all e-mail worldwide due to a surge in February, according to Symantec. Two botnets named Grum and Rustock helped push spam levels up 5.5 percent in February over the prior month, according to the security firm's report.
A new Europe-wide rule to prevent mobile phone users from building up large bills for surfing the Internet via their handset has come into force. Customers can now require their phone firm to cut them off when their bill reaches a certain level after accessing the internet in other European nations.
Four men accused of using a network of computers and automated software to buy up online tickets to concerts and sporting events and selling them at a profit were indicted on fraud, conspiracy, and computer hacking charges, federal prosecutors said. They allegedly made more than $25 million by re-selling more than 1.5 million of the "most coveted tickets" to performances by Bruce Springsteen, Hannah Montana, Bon Jovi, Barbara Streisand, and Billy Joel; shows including Wicked and The Producers; sporting events such as the 2006 Rose Bowl and 2007 Major League Baseball playoff games at Yankee Stadium; and tapings of the TV show Dancing with the Stars, according to the indictment.
The head of the global Internet addressing authority will visit China this week, according to people briefed on the matter, highlighting questions about China's Web censorship after it applied to offer domain names that end with Chinese characters. Rod Beckstrom, CEO of the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), will visit China for two days in his first trip to the country since taking his current job in June last year, according to one of the people.
Chatroulette, a Web site that connects videochatters with a limitless number of "random strangers" from around the globe, is an Internet sensation -- but it poses unique dangers for minors and new challenges for law enforcement. Though users of the site must confirm that they are at least 16 years old and that they agree not to broadcast obscene, offending or pornographic material, some legal experts -- including one who saw the dangers firsthand -- say those barriers can be easily bypassed and can connect children with sexual predators and child molesters.
PayPal has received the green light from the Reserve Bank of India to resume bank withdrawals for settlements involving exports of goods and services, but personal payments remains suspended. In a blog post, Farhad Irani, head of PayPal Asia-Pacific wrote that RBI has allowed PayPal to resume bank withdrawals for the exports of goods and services.
Recent cyber attacks disclosed by Google Inc. could have been considerably more widespread than previously believed, security researchers familiar with the investigation said. A report by Alex Stamos of iSEC Partners Inc., a cyber security firm, states that the number of companies hit by attacks that bear a strong resemblance to those on Google could total more than 100 -- about three times the number previously reported.
Policy and privacy experts agree that the relentless rise of Internet data harvesting has overrun the old approach of using lengthy written notices to safeguard privacy. These statements are rarely read, are often confusing and can’t hope to capture the complexity of modern data-handling practices.
Long skittish about forums such as Facebook and Twitter, the U.S. Department of Defense says that it is now OK with social networking services and other interactive Web 2.0 applications. A memorandum makes it official policy that the agency's nonclassified network will be configured to provide access to Internet-based capabilities across all Defense components, including the various combat branches.
Facebook was awarded a patent pertaining to streaming "feed" technology, more specifically "dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network," complementing another patent filing that has been published but not yet approved. The implications for this, as AllFacebook.com pointed out, are far-flung: Facebook may choose to pursue action against other social-media sites that potentially violate this patent.
The top senator on antitrust matters has written to NBC to express concern that some of its Internet coverage of the Winter Olympics is limited to pay television subscribers. Senator Herb Kohl's letter said sports fans who want to see some of the Olympic coverage on the site NBCOlympics.com must first register with the site after validating a subscription with "your cable, satellite or IPTV provider."
Facebook inadvertently routed e-mails to the wrong addresses, a problem the social networking site said was quickly resolved, but not before the messages landed in the inboxes of strangers. A Facebook spokeswoman did not say how many users were affected by the Facebook e-mail botch, only that it was a "small number of users for a short period of time."
British politicians were among those caught up in the latest Twitter-based scam which hijacks users' accounts to send out sexually explicit messages to friends and followers. Those tracking the Twitter account of Ed Miliband, the British energy minister, were surprised by a message carrying an unusually direct reference to the politician's sex life.
A federal judge has dismissed a year-old lawsuit against Microsoft over alleged antitrust violations for the "downgrade" rules it set for Windows Vista and XP. In her original complaint, a Los Angeles resident accused Microsoft of coercing computer makers into forcing consumers who wanted to run Windows XP to first buy Vista, or later, Windows 7, before they were allowed to downgrade to XP.
The head of EU data protection agencies has told Google it must warn people of the impending arrival of its Orwellian Street View spymobiles. According to AP, Alex Turk has written to Google's data privacy chief Peter Fleischer insisting that it "should always give advance notice on its website and in the local or national press before it takes pictures".
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